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Thursday, February 2, 2012

Chaos Dwarf: K'Daai Destroyer

So the another big project has been undertaken. Not sure what is wrong with me to keep taking on commissions when the future of what I will be doing is still in the air, but whatever it is what it is, and well what can you do sometimes!

So this one is kinda dear to my heart actually, since it is the K'Daai Destroyer! This bad boy has been brought up in a couple of our friendly games, and is just a beast! I know it is supposed to be a monster unit anyways, but this one just takes the cake! With all of its special rules, and abilities, and stats, it can almost be classified as cheating just to use it. Of course with that mentality, my good buddy from Izmir has decided he wants one, ordered the parts to make one, and has been nice enough to ask me to put it together and give it a Mr. Lee make over. Also I have been strictly forbidden from talking smack about him whatsoever.. so let's see if the above classifies or just borders on the insane.

Ok, with that intro aside, what have we gotten ourselves into? Well first off.. we had searched high and low across the world wide web in search for the perfect beast. The brief for this was simple. It must be big, it must be bipedal, and it must hold no weapons. Originally he had attempted to use this beast as the Destroyer.. however after it arriving, he realized that it was a tad bit on the small side to pull that effort off. It was only after this, that he contacted me, and asked for me assistance.

Other options that came up thereafter were things like the Bane Beast range, however this was when we ran into the other requirements of being bipedal, or having no weapons, although I still say that this would have been a much better and cooler option to have used.. but the price itself was what put him off that idea. Can't say that I blame him as the cost of painting him would be equal to the cost of buying him in the first place, even with the 17% discount that was valid at that time. Still wish he had chosen it though, would have been a damn fine model to paint up, more so since I have yet to see one finished yet, not even a studio paint job.

In the end, we had settled on the Titan Overlord from Crocodile Games. It was a close call as we were trying to understand the exact measurements of it. In the end we found out that it was 4.5 inches tall from its product description, but that still didn't really tell us if it was imposing enough for the task at hand.

Well I can say with a clear mind that it is imposing enough indeed! The model is massive, heavy, and fully made out of pewter! Really brings me back to my old gaming days when I was working on the original D&D models from reaper. How everything was made out of pewter or lead in those days, and the largest models were tiny in comparison to today's monstrosities.

As far as the model goes, it was really well made! No flash that I could see, aside from a pour point on one of the head's horns. Minor mold lines on the side of the back body piece, and on the hands themselves near the claws. However, aside from that, it was relatively clean and clear of any real work to be done to prep the pieces. The fitting together of the pieces is a completely different story though. Minor Gaps was what I was told, and well the language barrier seems to be present once more between me and my buddy. Gaps exist, this is part of working with metal, but these are complete holes in some areas. Namely the body to legs, the arms to body sections. I have only filled in and completed the arms thus far, but the gaps were quite apparent, and needed a good amount of GS to fill them in. On the plus side, this meant that I did not have to pin them, as the amount of procreate and superglue used on this beast will hold it for many moons to come. The body to legs section is not completed at this time, but the center peg from the legs is large enough to allow me to put the body on them without it completely falling off. So I can take shots of what it looks like standing up. Such as shown in this photo. Blurry, but you get the gist of it.

So with this done, I have begun work on the diorama that will be the K'Daai Destroyer. You can see the WIP page of it here. I will be posting all updates and what not there also with the odd piece of information to the main section linking back to it from time to time. In the meantime, to show off at least some more photos.. you can see them below..

Original layout

Another angle of original layout

Left arm gap filling

Right arm gap filling

Layout option 2

You can see snails and the summoner in the back here

Size comparisons in the new version

As writing this, I got a mail from my mate also to remove the first snail as it is making the base too crowded. Will replace it with a smaller glyphed stone instead, and look to see what we can do with the snail in the future. Might just make it into a UF for him, or send it back and get him to do it. Though I will probably paint it first.. just to make sure it gets the right amount of painting love that it deserves.

Hopefully the snow goes away in time for me to be able to prime this soon. I would hate to lose my motivation on this model as it can take some time to regain once lost. Though I guess I have the client who will be pushing me to make sure it gets finished and what not! So there is always that.